The default cache of the local filer is 64GB. This is implemented as a dynamic VHDX file.

This disk will house all volumes provisioned on this Filer or brought down from other Filers in this or other sites to make remote shares available to users of this site.

To increase the size of this file – local cache size of this Filer:

Stop the Nasuni Filer VM. For example, use the Powershell cmdlet Stop-VM, or right-click on the Filer VM in Hyper-V Manager and select shutdown.

Expand the cache.vhdx file either via Powershell cmdlet from the VM settings in Hyper-V Manager

Start the Nasuni Filer VM

The Nasuni Filer detects the new cache disk size and expands the cache size accordingly:

Expanding the cache size will be an IO intensive process:

At the end of this process, which takes several minutes, the cache size reflects the new cache.vhdx file size It’s unlcear why the actual cache.vhdx file size takes 110.7 GB on disk for a 500GB cache, while the same file took 1.5GB on disk for 64GB cache. There seems to be no linear correlation..

2. Remove/adjust the default bandwidth restriction:

Since I’m managing the 3 filers in this demo using NMC (Nasuni Management Console), I have to do this step in NMC. In the NMC, click Filers on top, then Quality of Service on the left, check the box next to the desired filer, and click Edit

It converts the Filer.vhd to VHDX format. VHDX format has many performance and other enhancements over VHD.

It creates the Nasuni Filer VM as Gen 1 VM.

It detects the host’s first external vSwitch and attaches the VM vNIC to it. If you have more than 1 external vSwitch on this Hyper-V host, you can spell out which one to use in the command line by using the -vSwitch parameter

It assigns the VM 4 CPU vCores. This can be adjusted by the optional parameter -ProcessorCount

It sets VM automatic start action to “start”. This ensures the VM is started when the host is rebooted.

It sets the VM memory to static. This VM does not have the Hyper-V Linux Integration Service and cannot use dynamic memory.

It assigns the VM vNIC a static MAC address. This is necessary for live-migration. Otherwise the VM will lose its IP settings when live-migrated.

It assigns the vNIC VLAN ID if the -VLAN parameter is used

It creates and adds the Cache.vhdx and COW.vhdx disks and attaches them to the VM. They’re attached to SCSI controller 0 / LUN 0, and controller 1 / LUN 1. This is to mirror setup suggested by Nasuni. It’s not clear why the Cow.vhdx disk needs to be on a separate SCSI controller or why it needs LUN 1 specifically. By default, the second SCSI disk added will go on controller 0 / LUN 1.

Finally the script starts the VM.

As usual, the script leave a log file behind on the folder where it ran. Log file lists steps taken and will look like:

The Nasuni Filer is a Virtual Machine (on Hyper-V, VMWare or other hypervisor) or a physical appliance that is implemented in each client site. It runs a Linux OS and provides storage to local clients as NFS3, SMB2, or iSCSI. Many Filers can be implemented in one or more client sites.

The Nasuni Management Console (NMC) is implemented as a virtual machine running Linux. It provides a web interface for managing all Filers and the Nasuni service and account throughout the organization.

Volumes are provisioned on the Nasuni filers. They’re thin provisioned. Volume data is replicated automatically via the Nasuni service to the public cloud. Currently, Nasuni uses Azure in the back end. Customer has no direct cloud visibility. Cloud access and storage is bundled and abstracted by the Nasuni service.

The Nasuni UniFS runs on the Nasuni Filers. It provides NFS3 and SMB2 shares to local clients. Shares can be replicated and cached to other Nasuni filers in other client sites via the Nasuni service. The Nasuni service places the primary data set on the public cloud (256-bit AES encrypted) and replicates the actively used files to each site as needed (some configuration required as I will illustrate).

Similar to other cloud integrated storage solutions, Nasuni service is suited for unstructured data/workloads such as file shares. It’s not suited for tier 1 workloads such as Hyper-V, SQL, Exchange, …

The following posts will go over setting up and using the Nasuni service: